Judge laments the whittling away of habeas corpus by high court

Criminal Procedure

By Timothy P. O’Neill

Timothy P. O’Neill is the Edward T. and Noble W. Lee Chair in Constitutional Law for 2014-15 at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Readers are invited to visit his Web log and archives at jmls.edu/oneill.

Posted February 1, 2017 1:45 PM

Stephen Reinhardt, 85, has been a judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for the last 37 years. An unabashed liberal, he once remarked, “I can’t remember the last time I read ‘justice’ in a court opinion, except in front of someone’s name.” A former clerk gave him the nickname Chief Justice of the Warren Court-in-Exile.I have read many Reinhardt opinions over the years, but a recent one on the state of federal habeas review in the U.S. is particularly significant. He laments how …

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